Why the mobile phone game industry sucks

I am a huge fan of video games and love to follow the progress of the gaming industry , I have been a follower since some punk kid named Bhargav introduced me to “The King of Fighters 96 ” in a shady video game parlor in New Delhi . I have played Arcade Games , PC games and to some extent I have played games on consoles too . I liked to play games on my phone too but it was the snake game on my Nokia 3250 which i had an eternity ago , since then I have moved on to a Sony Ericsson phone which supports java games , and from that day I have been looking for one decent game to play on it . Countless downloads and many frustrating hours later , I have realized that mobile games suck . Let me give you my top 3 reasons why..

1. The Screen size is too small : I have heard people complaining about the screen sizes on the DS and the PSP , please!! in comparison with mobile phone screens , The PSP screen is a golf course , and even if a large screen phone came about it is way more expensive than the PSP and the DS put together.
2. The games suck : It seems the mobile game industry has a game for every single movie which comes out and a game for every B grade movie or a pop star ( the Sameera Reddy game) , I am talking quality here.. There are no big names, no content delivery, Amazingly crappy graphics and sound, awful Controls and A thousand game developers developing 1000000000 games with absurd titles, maybe the hardware is not good enough but thats no excuse for the mess
3. The controls suck : Lets face it, the regular mobile phone alphanumeric keypad was meant for keying in numbers and with great difficulty it allows for some messaging too , and one thing it was not meant to do was to play games . if you put all the controls necessary for a good gaming experience on a phone it would look like a weapon straight out of star wars

What can be done ? Its very simple.. instead of developing mobile phones which can also support games, develop better gaming handhelds which  also support basic mobile phone features , I am sure a lot of people would support and buy something like that .
Please note that this is not meant for people who like playing Sudoku or some scrambled words game on their phones , I am speaking about the gamer who wants to kick a few alien asses when he’s on the move . As far as he is concerned mobile phone games just plain SUCK . If there is anyone who has a better story to tell about mobile phone games , convince me otherwise.

 

Mobile WiMAX – BroadBand on the Go

Nokia recently announced its plans to release phones featuring WiMAX in 2008. The current iteration of WiMAX is only able to connect when a receiver is stationary, but a new mobile revision is expected to be released by the end of 2007 . Intel spoke about mobile WiMAX evolution at the Beijing IDF , and Sprint also has plans for Mobile WiMAX.
The WiMAX technology, based on the IEEE 802.16 Air Interface Standard has already proven itself as a cost effective fixed wireless alternative to cable and DSL services. In December, 2005 the IEEE approved the 802.16e amendment to the 802.16 standard. This amendment adds the features and attributes to the standard necessary to support mobility. Mobile WiMAX is a broadband wireless solution that combines mobile and fixed broadband networks through a common wide area broadband radio access technology and a flexible network architecture. The Mobile WiMAX Air Interface uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) , I wont go into the details of it but generally it is a multiplexing technique that divides the available bandwidth into sub-carriers which are of multiple frequencies . Initial Mobile WiMAX profiles cover 5, 7, 8.75, and 10 MHz channel bandwidths for worldwide spectrum allocations in the 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz frequency bands. The WiMAX forum lists many advantages of this technology of which a few are
> High Data Rate L data rates up to 63 Mbps per sector and peak UL data rates up to 28 Mbps per sector in a 10 MHz channel.
>High Scalability and Security
>High Mobility with Optimized Handover Schemes

Many of Nokia’s competitors have opted instead to pursue 4G alternatives to WiMAX. Sprint Nextel is at the forefront of this initiative, along with Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, Motorola and KPN Mobile.

Useful links

The Wimax Forum Website

Information on 4G

Nokia WiMAX Technology

More on WiMAX Technology

 

Intel Penryn – first performance numbers Revealed

Intel has revealed the first performance numbers for their upcoming 45nm Penryn Series of processors at their spring IDF in Beijing . Penryn will make its debut in late 2007 or early 2008 and is the successor to the current line up of Core 2 Duo processors made on the 65nm process.
Intel gave out performance numbers of the new processor with a comparison to its current top of the line 2.93 GHz Kentsfield QX6800 CPU . In comparison the new 3.33 GHz Yorkfield processor (Penryn quad-core for desktops) with 12 MB L2 cache and FSB1333 will gain about 15% in imaging applications, 25% for 3-D Rendering, 40% or more for gaming and more than 40% faster video encoding with SSE4 optimized video encoders, This performance gain comes from the fact that Intel has a set of 47 new SSE instructions to enhance the performance of such CPU intensive Applications .

On the server and workstation side, Intel expects its 45 nm FSB1600 processors to deliver up to 45% more speed for Bandwidth Hungry applications and a 25% acceleration for servers which use Java, when compared to the current X5355 quad-core processor.
Intel also intends to announce Skulltrail : a Consumer dual socket solution for Penryn which would allow up-to 8 cores on two chips and 4 graphics card on board , It should be noted that AMD has such a platform out for some time now which I had written about ( Quad Fx) . For more information on Penryn visit the IDF site ,The session Files can be downloaded in the PDF format.

 

Toshiba Launches 200GB Portable Hard Drive

Toshiba has announced three models for its range of ultra high capacity USB 2.0 External hard drives at 100GB,120GB,160GB and 200 GB in the price range of $130 – $230 .
The 200GB drive offers the highest available capacity in the 2.5 inch form factor and runs off USB power ie. It doesn’t require an external power adapter like the ones available at 3.5″ form factor. The drives are compatible with both Windows and Mac’s and come bundled with NTI Shadow backup software for both the Windows and Max OS X, which include version control and continuous backup when the drive is connected, According to Toshiba these Hard Drives are able to handle a 29-inch drop (non-operating) as well as a 4-inch operating drop.
The Technical specifications are as follows

	Capacity: 100GB/120GB/160GB/200GB Small Footprint: 23.6mm (H) x 88mm (W) x 142.1 (D) (0.94″ x 3.5″ x 5.6″) 8MB Buffer Weight: 1lbs 1oz

 

Display 2007 – OLED Displays Arrive

Big Screen OLED displays may not be very far from the commercial market , Sony Electronics and Toshiba have both showcased their OLED TV’s at Display 2007 .
Both the models from Sony have a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, which can also go beyond that. Also both displays have greater than 100% NTSC color reproduction the 11-inch model has a 1024×600 resolution, while the 27-inch holds a 1920×1080 resolution. Both models come with HDMI and DC input( Source : AV Watch ) .
The most remarkable feature of an OLED display is the thickness of the product, the 27 inch Sony display measures around 9mm and the 11 inch display measures in at an amazing 3mm, and since OLED’s don’t need a back light like LCD displays, they consume less power and are extremely light in weight , just check out the picture that follows

Sony representatives say that the 11 inch model is near to production and it will take some more time till the bigger displays come into production . OLED technology holds a lot of promise because it enables displays to be thinner, lighter and cheaper than ever before , look out for more on OLED over the coming months because this technology is here to stay.

 

Is this the time to go blu-ray

Latest sales figures show Blu-ray Disc outselling HD DVD seven to three , Blu-ray’s strong sales since the beginning of 2007 have given it a 7 to 3 sales ratio vs HD DVD ,From Jan 1 2007 sales of Blu-ray are 549,730 units and for HD DVD its 249,451 units (source : Neilsen Videoscan) .
When blu-ray was announced, many people wrote it off saying it was another one in Sony’s list of unsuccessful formats along with Betamax and the soon to be killed UMD , coming back to the present , 90% of the CE industry and most of the major motion picture studios are backing blu-ray as the format of choice , the Blu-ray disc association now has the support of 170 of the largest and most respected consumer electronics companies . Microsoft a staunch supporter of the HD DVD camp seems to be distancing itself from the format, Why do I say this ? Well the recently announced Xbox 360 Elite does not include an inbuilt HD DVD drive , and reasoning that the elite is supposed to compete with the lower end blu-ray enabled PS3 20gb basic package , it makes sense to say that MS is playing safe here , if they see HD DVD taking a fall they’ll switch over to blu-ray.
So Is this the time to go blu-ray , No! i would say .. because every new format takes some time to standardize , there are talks of hardware standardization for Blu-ray players by Oct 2007 to include features like true PIP among others. Another factor would be cost , the prices for blu-ray drives will fall by end of 2007 , many majors have announced that they are already working on low cost blu-ray drives . I live in India and i dont see myself buying a Blu- ray player anytime before 3 years from now, but for the lucky few out there I would suggest sometime around Christmas 2007

 

Intel talks next gen with Nehalem and 32nm process

Intel has already announced that the 45nm Penryn family of CPU’s based on the Core Micro Architecture would be out later this year. keeping in line with  their “tick-tock” model of silicon and micro architecture, the company has also revealed some initial details about their brand new micro architecture codenamed ‘Nehalem’ which is expected to be out sometime in 2008 .

According to the Intel Website ” Nehalem is a truly dynamic- and design-scalable microarchitecture. It will deliver both performance on demand and optimal price/performance/energy efficiency for each platform.” The features include dynamically managed cores ,power , memory and interfaces, the new SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions. the new System Architecture also includes a high performance integrated graphics engine for client platforms. The new chips will be manufactured on Intel’s new 32nm silicon process technology which will also make its initial appearance by mid 2008

 

Xbox 360 hardware Upgrade ???????!!!!

I’ve been reading about this a lot , Rumors have been flying around for quite some time now about a possible upgrade to the 360’s hardware , No! Microsoft is not going to upgrade the 360’s core hardware capabilities but according to reports it will include a 120gb HDD, a built in HDMI port, comes in a black color theme and it maybe a few inches thinner than the original. Now the reported price tag is a little less positive, around 480-500 $ which brings it very close to the lower end version of the PS3, also the 120 GB hard drive will be sold separately for around 200$ .If these reports turn out to be true, I expect it to launch around the same time when the big titles for PS3 roll out, like MGS 4, DMC 4 and tekken PS3 . Microsoft clearly has its strategy all planned , They are robbing Sony of their exclusive titles , they have a bunch of exclusives on their side and Microsoft clearly has the advantage online with XBOX 360 live . Now its time for our friends at Sony to get their act together because if PS3 has to live up to to the expectations , then they need to start rolling out those Aces that they “say” they have up their sleeves.

 

PCI Express – now out of the box

The PCI Express Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced a new cabling standard which will allow PCI express cards to move out of the computer chassis , This will allow for products like an external graphics module which will link to your computer through a cable.
There are a lot of reasons one would want to do this, the first and foremost being cooling .If u have seen the new 8800GTX by Nvidia you would have noticed how big it actually is , now imagine two of these monsters in SLI in your box and with overclocking becoming more popular nowadays these cards tend to run quite hot, and cooling them becomes another issue , for such a configuration you would be better off opting for a water cooled solution rather than taking chances with cooling fans .
Another reason seems to be more of a gamer’s dream rather than reality but someday it might just turn out to be true, take for example quad SLI, which connects four graphics cards, in the future we may have an interface which connects say 6 or 8 cards , It would make more sense to move such a graphics unit away from the chassis and into a different box,rather than trying to squeeze in so many slots onto the main-board.
Asus has already demonstrated this technology for laptops at CES with the ASUS XG station and this is an excellent example of what the technology can do.

 

Vista and DX10 – GPU roadmap 2007

 

With all the hype surrounding vista and with the ongoing console wars , The Nvidia 8800 GTX launch went almost unnoticed , I am not lucky enough to own one but i surely gobbled up the demo videos on you-tube , Crysis running on max settings , and the stunning UT3 are just some examples of what this graphics powerhouse can do .
Unfortunately at the Vista launch there were just two DX10 cards available , the Nvidia 8800GTX and the scaled down version of the same 8800GTS , somewhere around march ,I expect Nvidia will start shipping mainstream and lower end DX10 products based on the G86 and G84 , this most probably will coincide with the ATI R600 launch which promises to be the most advanced graphics processor ever to grace this earth , by April ATI will announce their lower end DX10 range of GPU’s and then we have the classic Red vs Green battle again for the rest of the year.
A direct impact of this will be on the pricing of the current generation of GPU’s , prices are expected to fall substantially and since it will take some time for DX10 to settle in properly , it looks like the right time to invest in a top of the line DX9 GPU .